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Did Federal Agents Go Rogue? Former DOJ Insider Sounds Alarm Over Ilhan Omar Raid
Three weeks before the midterms, Homeland Security Investigations agents searched the Washington home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Fox News had it first as an exclusive, with video of agents at her door. Now Xochitl Hinojosa, who ran the Justice Department’s public affairs office under President Biden, is asking what a lot of people are thinking. She says there’s a longstanding rule at DOJ that you don’t take overt actions like this before an election, especially against a candidate on the ballot. Then she wrote, “Now, the question is whether HSI went rogue.” She says HSI has a reputation inside the FBI for leaking and ignoring protocol, and she’s asking Attorney General Todd Blanche where the leak investigation is. The Justice Department says agents carried out a search warrant approved by a judge as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. It won’t say what that investigation is about. Fox’s sources say it centers on paperwork Omar’s late father filled out when she was a child. Omar calls the fraud allegations lies. When police power gets aimed at the president’s critics right before an election, that should scare every American, no matter who you vote for.
Democrats Tie Corruption to Your Grocery Bill, and Voters Are Listening
Speaking of a rigged system, Democrats have finally figured out how to talk about it. Politico reports the party is closing this campaign by telling voters corruption isn’t just a crime in Washington. It’s the reason your rent, your health insurance and your groceries cost so much. And new research says it works. A national survey last month from Blue Rose Research and Winning Jobs Narrative Action found that tying corruption to housing, health care and the cost of living lifted support for Democratic congressional candidates by about three points. Strategist Jesse Ferguson boiled it down in one line. “Corruption is why your costs are high.” His advice is to start with the prices people are paying, admit corruption lives in both parties, and don’t make it all about Donald Trump. Pollster Celinda Lake says it lands best with outsider candidates who connect a rigged economy to a rigged political system. A separate Navigator Research survey found most Democrats and most Republicans agree corruption is driving up their costs. Republicans say Democrats don’t own this issue. So here’s fair warning. If Democrats win on cleaning up Washington, they’d better show up in January holding a broom.
Why Did Plainclothes ICE Agents Shoot a Father With His 5-Year-Old in the Car?
New York’s mayor wants answers. On Thursday, ICE agents in the Marble Hill neighborhood shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the neck while he sat in his car with his 5-year-old child. The child wasn’t physically hurt and is with family. Homeland Security says agents were on a targeted operation to arrest a man from the Dominican Republic with a prior criminal conviction. On Sunday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani told MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff the agents were in plain clothes, and even he couldn’t tell from the video that they were law enforcement. “It feels like you’re looking at a mass shooter,” he said. He noted New York police are barred from firing into vehicles in most cases, and said ICE treats the law as a suggestion. Mamdani says he spoke with President Trump Thursday night, the NYPD will review the shooting, and ICE has no place in his city. Belgal is now in a federal jail in Brooklyn. One analysis found immigration officers have shot at least two dozen people since Trump returned to office, and 3 American citizens are dead. Armed men with no uniforms firing into a car with a child inside. That’s not public safety. That’s what a secret police looks like.
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Can Elon Musk Buy Congress? Billionaire Drops $366 Million to Save Republicans
Remember when Elon Musk left Washington last year and promised he was pulling back from politics? “I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said. So much for that. Figures his own people handed The New York Times show the world’s richest man has poured more than $276 million into Republican groups and his own super PAC just since July. That brings his total this cycle to about $366 million, more than the roughly $290 million he spent in 2024. The biggest check, $158 million, went to the Senate Leadership Fund. That’s among the largest political donations in American history. More than $76 million went to his own America PAC, $20 million to the House Republican super PAC, and $10 million to a group backing Ken Paxton for Senate in Texas. Paxton is the attorney general who investigated Musk’s critics at Media Matters. America PAC has spent more than a third of its disclosed budget in Texas, where its ads and door hangers go after Democrat James Talarico. And the PAC says it’ll be back in 2028. One man, $366 million. That’s what Citizens United gave us, and it isn’t democracy. It’s an auction.
Kids Are Dying of Measles. Why Is RFK Jr.’s Old Group Going After Their Doctors?
Texas is also ground zero for something even uglier. Last year a measles outbreak in west Texas infected at least 762 people and killed two unvaccinated little girls, ages 6 and 8, at a children’s hospital in Lubbock. Now The Guardian reports that Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used to lead, says it filed complaints with the Texas medical board over the doctors who treated those girls, claiming the wrong antibiotics killed them. The Guardian couldn’t confirm the board is reviewing anything. The group’s Brian Hooker is promising boots on the ground in Pennsylvania next, where two unvaccinated infants and a 40-year-old woman have died. That’s 8 people dead of measles in less than two years. Kennedy, now our health secretary, has suggested Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro made up deaths for political reasons, and the CDC lists only two of that state’s five deaths this year. Vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit says the goal is to “distract, distract, distract” from the damage. Lubbock’s public health director, Katherine Wells, says those doctors went above and beyond. When the people who spread the lie start going after the people who treat the sick, every family in America is less safe.
Right-Wing Smear Machine Faceplants as Talarico Hoax Collapses in Hours
And finally, back to that Texas Senate race, where the folks rooting for Musk’s candidate had a very bad Sunday. James Talarico came down with the flu and stayed off the campaign trail for more than a week. But right-wing accounts spent days spreading rumors that he was secretly in mental health treatment, and Ken Paxton’s campaign demanded proof he was alive. Then on Sunday, pro-Trump influencer Nick Sortor posted a 47-second phone recording he claimed proved Talarico had just been discharged from the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility near Cincinnati. Elon Musk helped spread it around. Talarico had already been out in public at the Austin City Limits festival on Friday. And within hours, the facility itself said flatly that Talarico has never received treatment there. Talarico answered in six words. “I’ve never even been to Ohio.” His spokesman, JT Ennis, called it a lie built to push a pathetic conspiracy theory. Laugh, but don’t miss what they tried to do. They tried to turn getting mental health care into a mark of shame, and millions of Americans who get that care were listening. When you can’t beat a man’s ideas, you make things up about him.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, October 12, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
